I have spent most of today on this scripting problem and have not found the answer either in my mind or in this forum.

I need to identify records in an inventory database. I have a field for 'date last sold' and 'date last received.' I need to find stuff where both of these field are more than a certain number of days. Like for instance, stuff we haven't received or sold for 90 days. I want to make this a variable report, so the report generator can put in the number of days and the date they want to count from. So far, no problem, just use a couple of global variables and an entry screen.

Here, however IS the problem: I want an expression in Find mode like: date received is less than 'cutoff date' - - cutoff date is a calculated field that takes the report date and subtracts the number of days from it. For instance, if you'd want to find stuff that hadn't sold or been received for 90 days from March 1st, the 'cutoff date' would be calculated to be something like December 3rd.

So the question is, how the heck can you stuff expressions like ">cutoff date" into a Find command using scripting. I have tried Insert Text, Insert Calculated Field, Set Field - - so far I don't seem to have the correct comand to build a Find command with ">" or "<" in it . . . . or with any variable in it for that matter . . .

I normally do it in two steps:

Enter Find Mode

Insert Text [YourDateField, "<"][select entire contents]

Insert Calculated Result [YourDateField, CutoffDate]

Perform Find

Another method, which I haven't tried, is given in this topic:

http://www.fmforums.com/ubb/Forum15/HTML/000341.html

Is "Insert Text" in 5.0 the same as "Paste Literal" in 4.x?

Just wanted to see if they changed the terminology in the upgrade or if they added scripting functions...

Later

It's a change of terminology. Most paste commands are now insert. My memory of FM 3 is fading rapidly (I never used 4), so I'm not positive but I don't think they've actually added new paste/insert variations. This is what FM5 has:

paste

insert text

insert calculated result

insert from last record

insert current date

insert current time

insert current user name

insert picture

insert movie

[This message has been edited by BobWeaver (edited March 07, 2001).]